192 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



only chip by chip, or grain by grain, that ruin ap 

 preaches. The timber also lasts an incredibly long 

 time. Beneath one of the arched ways, in the Ches- 

 ter wall above referred to, I saw timbers that must 

 have been in place five or six hundred years. The 

 beams in the old houses, also fully exposed to the 

 weather, seem incapable of decay ; those dating from 

 Shakespeare's time being apparently as firm as ever. 

 f I noticed that the characteristic aspect of the clouds 

 /in England was different from ours soft, fleecy, 

 / vapory, indistinguishable never the firm, compact, 

 S sharply-defined, deeply-dyed masses and fragments, 

 (so common in our own sky. It rains easily but 

 slowly. The average rain-fall of London is less than 

 that of New York, and yet it doubtless rains ten days 

 in the former to one in the latter. Storms accompa- 

 Aiied with thunder are rare ; while the crashing, 

 wrenching, explosive thunder-gusts so common with 

 / as, deluging the earth and convulsing the heavens, 

 Vare seldom known. 



In keeping with this elemental control and moder- 

 ation, I found the character and manners of the peo- 

 ple gentler and sweeter than I had been led to 

 believe they were. No loudness, brazenness, imper- 

 tinence; no oaths, no swaggering, no leering at 

 women, no irreverence, no flippancy, no bullying, no 

 insolence of porters, or clerks, or conductors, no im- 

 portunity of boot-blacks or newsboys, no omnivorous- 

 ness of hackmen at least, comparatively none all 

 of which an American is apt to notice and I hop 



